


running every red light

by inlovewithnight



Category: Florida Panthers RPF, Hockey RPF
Genre: Multi, One Night Stands, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-06 00:53:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5396675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron is trying to get a message across. Willie isn't listening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	running every red light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).



The clock says it’s 2:30 AM when Willie wakes up. That is… not a time he’s a big fan of seeing anymore.

He lies there for a moment, trying to figure out what knocked him out of his sleep, until he hears muffled cursing and giggling downstairs. A female voice, which—he reaches out automatically and finds Megan warm and asleep beside him, so the most obvious answer is right out. And now he can’t just ignore it and go back to sleep.

He drags himself out of bed, glares at the completely not-a-guard-dog asleep on the floor, and goes downstairs to investigate.

The young lady in his kitchen, drinking his Gatorade and frowning at her phone, is tall and blonde and extremely pretty. Her shoes are very heel-y and her skirt is very tiny. Willie rubs his eyes and reminds himself to look at a point somewhere to the left of her head and absolutely nowhere near her torso.

“Can I help you?” he asks, stepping into the kitchen light. She jumps and squeaks, and he puts his hands up immediately. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you. You startled me a little, though, so…”

She squints at him, then smiles and clutches her phone to her chest. Her movements are a little slow, a little blurred; she is very drunk. That just makes this even more bizarre and dangerous.

“You must be the brother!” she says happily.

He is going to regret asking this. “Whose brother?”

“Aaron’s! He told me he lived with his brother.” She nods and takes another drink of the Gatorade. “Sorry, I’ll be out of your way in a minute, I’m just waiting for the Uber.”

“Where is he?”

“Asleep, I guess.” She looks at her phone again. “Oh, it’s two minutes out. I can go wait outside.”

“I’ll walk you out,” he says, because he’s a gentleman and she’s very young and it’s 2:30 goddamn AM, even in the very ritzy neighborhood they’d chosen for condo-renting and counting down his NHL time.

“That’s so nice of you!” She smiles at him, her teeth stained red from the Gatorade, and he is suddenly absolutely crushed by awareness of the age difference between them. God. She’s objectively gorgeous and all he can think is that he wants to give her a jacket and offer to drive her home himself in case the Uber driver turns out to be a jerk.

He walks her outside, waits with her on the porch, tells her to take some Advil and have water before she goes to bed. He earns a kiss on his cheek for his trouble before she gets in the car and disappears into the night.

Willie stands on the porch for a few minutes, breathing in the heavy-humid Florida air.

He’s going to kill Aaron.

**

When his alarm goes off, he’s a little more clear-headed.

“Kid,” he says when Aaron emerges from his room for breakfast. “Your visitor woke me up last night.”

Aaron blinks at him a few times before his eyes widen in recognition. “Oh, Carly? Sorry about that, Mitchie. I thought she was just going to leave.”

Megan looks up from her iPad with danger written all over her face, and Willie hurries to intercept the moment. “Yeah, that’s the thing, Eks. It’s good manners to let girls stay the night, you know? Or at least wait with them til their car comes. Kicking them out and going to sleep is kinda…”

“Tacky,” Megan supplies. Aaron blinks again.

“Tacky’s one word for it,” Willie agrees. “I was going to say rude. But yeah.”

“Oh.” Aaron nods. “Okay, yeah, I can see that. Let them stay the night. Got it.”

“You can even make them coffee in the morning,” Willie says. “Be a gentleman. You know? Just… don’t be a dick.”

“I’ll do better,” Aaron says seriously. “I swear.”

And it’s _Aaron_ , who works so hard at anything anyone tells him is a failing, so Willie figures that’s the last he has to worry about it.

**

A week later, he comes down to let Pinot out and finds another girl sitting at the counter with his favorite Salmon Foundation mug in her hands.

“Good morning,” he says, snapping his fingers at Pinot, who is already trying to climb her legs.

“Hi.” She’s blonde, too, but it’s obviously dyed; her roots are thick and dark and clearly being played up on purpose for an effect. She’s wearing a miniskirt but also one of Aaron’s t-shirts, and her eye makeup is smeared all over. He has to bite down on an urge to get her a washcloth and Megan’s makeup remover cream.

“You’re Aaron’s brother, right?” she asks.

“Yeah.” It’s easier than explaining the truth. “I’m sorry about the dog, let me get him out of your way.”

“It’s fine.” She has a thick accent; it comes out as _faaaahhhhn._ “He’s in the shower? And then he’s gonna drive me home. He’s such a sweetheart.”

Willie has no idea what he’s supposed to say. “Well, we tried to raise him right.”

She giggles and sips her coffee, which at least prompts him to go get mugs out for himself and Meg. “I have to walk the dog,” he says, “but if I don’t get back before you leave, have a nice day.”

“You’re both so sweet!” She beams at him, and she is definitely not as young as the other one—Carly—because his reaction to that is only, like, half paternal.

He grabs the leash and takes Pinot on a power-walk, making it all the way to the end of the block before he realizes that Meg might be a lot less easygoing when she gets downstairs.

Well, Aaron can deal with that, if it happens. Serves him right.

**

When he gets back, Megan is slicing bagels and looking distinctly amused.

“Tanya thinks you are _such_ a gentleman,” she says.

“Well, I am.”

“Ha.” She waves the knife at him. “I invited her to stay for breakfast and I thought Aaron was going to choke.”

“He’s still figuring out the whole one night stand thing, I guess.”

“Is it absolutely necessary that he figure it out at all?”

Willie rolls his eyes. “Honey…”

“Yeah, yeah. Hockey.” She slices another bagel and puts the knife away. “Because I like you, you get avocado and cheese today.”

“Thank you.”

“Aaron is on his own.”

“Cold, but I’m not gonna argue.”

“Then you can also have salsa.” She starts piecing the bagels together and he leans on the counter, watching her.

“Remember the first night you came back to my place?” he asks. She smiles and looks up at him through her hair.

“You made me Folgers instant and cold cereal.”

“He’ll learn how to be a romantic, too, someday.”

He escapes to the deck with his bagel before she gets more than halfway through the standard list of all the ways he’s not a romantic. He knows this routine.

**

What with one thing and another, he doesn’t see Aaron until the kid corners him in the weight room after skate.

“What did you think of Tanya?” he asks, standing over the bench press. Willie blinks up at him, trying to pull his brain out of workout focus enough to answer.

“She should go with the dark hair,” he says finally. “Sometimes the natural color is just what suits you best.”

Aaron looks at him like he was speaking gibberish. “I don’t care about her _hair_ , Mitchie.”

“Ah.” Of course not. “She was very nice.”

“And I was a gentleman, right?”

“Absolutely.” Willie takes a breath. “Are you gonna spot me or just stand there?”

Aaron frowns at him like he’s missing something obvious, something important, but doesn’t say anything. After a beat he puts his hands out to spot the bar, and Willie lets the whole thing go. They’ll talk about it later, or they won’t. Maybe the next time the kid brings someone home. There’s no reason to think that’s going to stop anytime soon. 

**

“I hope he’s being safe,” Megan says out of nowhere while they’re watching TV. “Do you think he’s being safe?”

It takes Willie a minute to realize she probably doesn’t mean Tim Gunn. “Who? And in what context?”

“Aaron, and with his… girls.” She frowns a little. “Do you think he’s being safe? Because if he isn’t, he could get in real trouble with this.”

“I’m sure he is.” Willie hits mute on the remote, secretly hoping this will derail them from the rest of the show. “I mean, they get a lecture in orientation, and the medical staff reminds us all the time about, you know. Safety.”

“How nice that must be for you.”

Shit. “Anyway, yes, I’m sure he’s very safe.”

“You should talk to him anyway.” She takes the remote from him and turns the sound back on. 

“You mean right now?”

“Right now we’re spending quality married people time together.”

Willie slides his arm around her waist and pulls her closer. “We could make it higher-quality.” 

“Mm. We could. In a safe way the medical staff would approve of.”

He is going to be hearing about this for _days_.

**

The next day he ducks into a CVS and buys the largest box of the largest size condoms they have. He leaves them on Aaron’s bed and hopes that will take care of the issue.

Aaron _beams_ at him all through dinner, grinning, eyes wide, looking all… hopeful. Expectant. It’s bizarre. Willie tries to just be normal and wait for him to calm down.

Seeing all that eagerness fade makes him feel like he let Aaron down somehow. Like he missed a cue. But he has no idea what that might have been.

Maybe he should’ve bought the kid some, like, sensual massage oil, or something, too.

**

They have a homestand that ends with the Hurricanes, and it’s just… brutal. There’s no reason for it to be such a rough game, but everybody is in a hitting mood. Willie’s boys grind out a win, but they all pay for it. 

He hits the whirlpool after the game and hopes it’ll be enough, but it’s not. He leaves the bar after one beer, goes home and takes his usual painkiller cocktail, and tries to fall asleep with Megan, but no luck. It hurts and it won’t stop hurting and he lies there awake, staring at the ceiling, counting down to when he can go take an extra dose and make it stop.

He hears the front door open and close, he hears giggling and high heels crossing the hardwood, and he makes himself wait another ten minutes, just to be safe. Then he drags himself out of bed, pulls the covers up over Megan, and makes his way down to the kitchen. 

The pills go down bitter and nasty. He runs a glass of water and makes his way gingerly to the living room, where ESPN Classic can keep him company until they kick in. Sleeping sitting up will hurt less in the morning anyway.

He’s so distracted by the pain that it takes him a minute to realize the living room is not empty. The giggles are not coming from down the hall, they are coming from the couch at the end of the room, where Aaron is sitting with… two pretty girls competing for space in his lap.

That kid just keeps aiming higher.

“Oh,” Willie says kind of stupidly, gripping his water glass. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t… realize.”

The girls laugh, one of them quickly getting to her feet and smoothing her skirt. She’s tiny and brunette and really cute, very… ample, in the bosom region. Her friend is more of the tall and willowy persuasion and her blonde hair is dyed blue in streaks, and she is apparently going to take the opportunity to claim full possession of Aaron’s lap.

“Hey, Mitchie,” Aaron says. Slurs, really. Drunk-ass kid. “I thought you’d be asleep, sorry.”

“Yeah, I tried, just…” He shrugs and tries to look at a point above their collective heads. “My back’s bugging me.”

Aaron sits up, almost dislodging the blue-haired girl. “That hit in the second?”

“It didn’t help, that’s for sure.” 

“Well, do you need a hot pack, or an ice pack, or…” Aaron stops, blinking. “This is Cindy and that’s Sarah, by the way, and Sarah’s, like, pre-nursing, so maybe she could help.”

He waves off Aaron’s concern, stepping back toward the door. “I was gonna watch some TV and crash down here, but I’ll go back upstairs. You’re fine.”

The brunette—Sarah—smiles at him. “You want to hang out with us?”

This is hell, and he is in it. “Thank you, that’s very sweet. I don’t think my wife would like it, though.”

“Ohh.” She nods and looks at Aaron and Cindy. “Well, we can go somewhere else.”

“Yeah,” Cindy says. “Show us your room, Aaron.”

“You need anything, Mitchie?” Aaron asks as the girls drag him to his feet. Willie manages to keep a straight face while he shakes his head. Well. Probably. He thinks he does.

“See you in the morning,” he says while the three of them head off down the hall. He sinks into his chair and stares at the blank TV screen. It seems like there should be a conversation here about appropriate and inappropriate behavior while living in someone’s house, but… he’s got nothing. Nothing at all.

At least the drugs are kicking in. He can worry about it in the morning.

**

In the morning, he shuffles to the kitchen and stops, again, right inside the door. Aaron is, as usual, nowhere to be found, but Cindy and Sarah are both standing next to Megan. They’re all drinking coffee and talking in high-pitched, excited voices that kick him right behind the eyes, where his opiate hangover is camping.

“You’re _so_ pretty,” Cindy says. “Aaron told us you were pretty, but he didn’t say, like, _pretty_ pretty pretty!”

“Thank you,” Megan says, her voice shaking a little with suppressed laughter. “You’re so sweet.”

Willie turns around and goes upstairs. He definitely needs another hour of sleep, or at the very least some cold water to the face, before he’s ready to deal with this.

**

“I liked them,” Megan tells him, giggling at the look on his face. “They were very nice girls. A little dumb, but very nice. He has good taste.”

“You didn’t sit there _listening_ to them last night.” He sips his grapefruit juice and puts on his best falsetto. “No, honey, not like that, a little… a little slower, and more to the left, there you go, good boy.”

She winces, still giggling. “Oh, that’s… poor kid. I don’t want him to be bad at sex! That’s embarrassing!”

“They were doing their best to help him, for sure.” He rests his head on her shoulder and sighs. “Meg, how long do you think this is going to keep going on? I don’t know how many more late-night and early-morning surprises I can take.”

“He’ll settle down,” she says, scratching the top of his head gently. “He’s just getting his wild oats out there. There’s really nowhere new to go after a threesome, right?”

**

Aaron skates with a real spring in his step at practice. Willie wants to hit him into the boards ten or fifteen times.

Instead he waits until they’re wrapping up battle drills, then calls out to Gudbranson. “Hey, Guddy, you should ask Eks here about his night.”

“Oh?” Guddy’s on it like a shark, always down for slagging off his teammates. “What were you up to, man? Tell daddy all about it.”

Willie expected the usual round of blushing and evading followed by enthusiastic storytelling from Aaron. Instead, the kid’s got a tight jaw and distinctly pissed-off eyes.

“Nothing,” he says curtly. “And you’re not anybody’s daddy, fuck off.”

“Aww, come on, kid, you gotta give me something!” Guddy follows him all the way across the ice, and Willie sighs, because now he’s going to have to spend the rest of practice keeping the two of them apart and trying to stuff the genie of Guddy’s curiosity back into its bottle.

**

Aaron corners him outside the weight room. “Hey,” he says, and now his face is all red. “Hey, um, please don’t tell the other guys stuff like that. It’s my private stuff.”

Willie nods, twisting his towel between his hands. “Okay. But, um, you realize I know all about it, right? Since you’re doing it in my house?”

“Yeah. That’s fine.” Aaron stares at him intently for a moment. “It’s fine for you to know.”

Willie waits, but nothing else seems to be forthcoming. “Okay.”

“Just not anybody else. Okay?”

“Okay.” Willie takes a deep breath and tries to think of anything else to say, but really, there’s nothing. This is just fucking weird.

“Okay,” he says again, and pats Aaron on the shoulder. Then he turns and goes into the weight room to escape that weird expectant look. 

He’s definitely failing to do _something_ that Aaron wants him to do. But it could literally be anything, so he’s going to ignore it and hit the leg machines. That’s worked so far in his life.

**

Things are quiet and normal for, like, two weeks. There’s a long road trip in there, though, so maybe it wasn’t the best example of “normal.”

They spend their off day out on the boat, all four of them including Pinot, getting sunburned and tipsy. The fish are even biting. They get back, they have dinner, Aaron gets dressed to go out, and they share a really long, nice hug by the front door before he leaves and Willie and Megan go up to bed. 

In the morning, Willie comes downstairs to find a guy in the kitchen. 

He’s maybe in his mid-twenties, with dark curly hair, the kind of muscles that come from the gym and maybe a surfboard, and he has a roaring bear tattooed on his chest. 

That’s what distracts Willie the most, honestly, at least at first. He’s staring at the bear so hard he doesn’t quite realize the person under the bear is smiling at him.

“Hey,” Bear Guy says. “You must be Aaron’s brother.”

Oh. Another one. “Yeah, I… yes. And you. You are?”

“Chad.” 

Of course. Willie takes his offered hand and shakes it, though, then steps back and moves toward the coffee maker. “So… is Aaron in the shower?”

“He took the dog for a walk.” Chad’s brow furrows a little. “Like… forty-five minutes ago. I don’t know if he’s coming back until my car is gone, honestly.”

_Damn_ it, Aaron. “Sorry. We tried to raise him right, but sometimes he gets away from us.”

“It’s cool. I told him I was only in town for a few days, though, so he didn’t have to worry about me making it weird.”

Willie puts more coffee in the machine than is really necessary. “I’ll pass that along to him.”

“Thanks, man.” Chad looks out the window at the yard for a minute. “He really, like, worships the ground you walk on. He talked about you half the night.”

Willie stops and stares into the coffee grounds. “He did?”

“Yeah. He, like. He lights up when he talks about you.”

Willie’s stomach twists a little, an odd feeling tracking from there up the back of his neck to his brain. He’s going to have to sit with that feeling for a while, later, probably with a fishing pole in hand. Everything might make a lot more sense after that.

“And I think he’s kinda hot for your wife?” Chad shakes his head and pulls his keys out of his pocket. “So you might want to keep an eye on that. I dunno, man. Sweet kid, but he’s got some shit going on.”

“Don’t I know it,” Willie says. “Coffee for the road?”

**

Willie leaves for the rink before Aaron gets back with Pinot. He has a couple of meetings he needs to sit through, and then he needs to skate until his brain slows down. It’s not as good as fishing, but it’ll do.

Aaron finds him in the parking lot after practice. “You left early today.”

“I did.” Willie is glad he has his sunglasses on. He can borrow a lot of confidence he isn’t feeling right now. “I met your friend.”

Aaron shrugs easily. “Not a friend. Just a hookup.”

“Right.” Willie isn’t sure he’s ever really _seen_ Aaron before. Or maybe just not _this_ Aaron. Something’s definitely changed. “You can try not to be rude to guys, too. It’s not just for girls.”

“Yeah, I kinda…” Aaron sighs. “I got a little anxious, I guess.”

They stand there in silence for a moment, Aaron staring expectantly and Willie feeling the earth shifting around under his feet. “Was he your… first?”

Aaron _laughs_ , which, fuck that kid. “Not even close.”

“Ah.” Willie nods. “Great.”

“Do you want to know what we did?”

Willie chokes on air. “That’s… that’s none of my business, I’m pretty sure.”

Aaron shrugs again. “I don’t mind. Like I said before, you knowing stuff is okay.”

“I’m flattered,” Willie says after a moment, “but it’s really not my business.”

Aaron looks fucking _sad_. Willie badly needs that hour with a fishing pole. “Mitchie…”

Maybe two hours. Or a whole day. “What, Aaron? What?”

Aaron’s jaw tightens and he steps back. “Nothing. Forget it.”

He walks off before Willie can think of anything else to say, and is in his car before he realizes that “Stop” and “Wait” would have been acceptable. Fuck.

He gets in his own car and texts Meg that he’s going down to the water for a while. He thinks better there.

**

The fish have no answers, but any number of rapidly-growing hunches that fit together almost, but not quite, into a picture that makes sense. He doesn’t want to do anything until he’s sure. This is the kind of thing that if he’s wrong, he can’t take it back.

**

They’re on the road again, a one-off trip up to Ottawa, out at the bar after a narrow win. Willie, Lu, and Thorty stake out their old-man table in the back, nursing their beers and watching the kids with indulgent eyes.

“We were never that young,” Lu says with a sigh. “I was born already balding and with no game.”

Thorty snorts and takes a drink. “Are you saying these kids have game?” 

“Yeah, I am. Look at Eks over there.” Lu waves at the far end of the bar. “He’s getting it done.”

Willie follows his gesture and sees Aaron tucked up to the bar next to a tiny, dark-haired woman in a blue dress. She’s laughing at something, brushing her hair back off her face, and Aaron is gazing at her in eager adoration.

“The universe has to punish him at some point,” Lu says. “He can’t be young and talented and handsome and good at everything. He has to have some kind of deep, secret weakness. Like maybe he’s a serial killer or something.”

“I don’t think so, Lu.” Willie knows he shouldn’t stare, but he can’t seem to take his eyes off Aaron and the woman. She’s definitely older than the girls Aaron’s brought back to the house. Aaron leans in closer to her, talking in her ear, and Willie takes a gulp of his beer, almost choking on it. Fuck. He needs to look away and let the kid live his life.

He chokes again as the man standing on Aaron’s other side puts his arm around Aaron’s shoulders and says something to him that makes Aaron laugh and the woman put her hand on Aaron’s thigh. That. Was not what he expected at all.

“He _must_ be a serial killer,” Lu says darkly. “Who picks up couples when they’re nineteen? Nobody. Nobody does that.”

“You think he’s—” Willie cuts off as the woman slides off her stool and takes Aaron’s hand, while the guy does the same. They start toward the exit, and Aaron goes along with them, grinning, until just a step short of the door, when he looks back over his shoulder to their table.

He looks Willie _right in the eye_.

Then they’re gone, and Willie downs the rest of his beer. Well. That lines up with a lot of his half-formed fishing thoughts, almost too well.

**

A few hours later, when he’s dragged himself back to his room after an ill-advised switch from beer to scotch, he gets a text from Aaron.

_Do you get it now?_

He pushes the phone off the bed and buries his face in the pillow. Yeah, he _gets_ it now. Doesn’t know what to do with it. But he gets it.

**

Megan laughs so hard when he tells her about it, he’s a little afraid she might hurt herself.

“Oh,” she says, wiping tears from her eyes. “Oh, wow. Oh, Aaron. Of course he thought that was the best way to do it, instead of using words. He’s so _himself_.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Well, we have three options, don’t we?” She stretches her legs out and tangles them with his. “We can ignore it, we can tell him no, or we can take him up on it.”

“Megan.”

“Those _are_ the three options.”

“We have to ignore it. We’re the adults here.”

“He’s an adult. He’s not _great_ at it yet, but he’s an adult.”

“Are you saying you actually think this is a good idea?”

She shrugs and raises an eyebrow at him. “I’m not sure why you’re pretending we’ve never done this before.”

“Not for a _while_. And not with someone that young.”

She shrugs. “He’s old enough to know what he wants.”

“You’re a bad influence, Megan.”

“I always have been.” She’s quiet for a moment, then laces her fingers with his. “Talk to him. Give him a chance to put his cards on the table.” 

“And if they’re bad cards?”

“Then let him down easy.” She squeezes his hand. “But give him the chance to surprise you. He seems to be pretty good at it.”

**

Willie takes Aaron out to lunch after practice. Neutral territory seems like the best place to have this conversation, and he also likes the idea of being able to get some beer afterwards if necessary.

Aaron can apparently pick up on which way the wind is blowing, because he sits up straight in his chair, shoulders squared, jaw set. He’s ready for an argument or possibly to check an opposing forward into the boards.

“So,” Willie says after they put in their orders. “We need to talk about this.”

“I’ve been trying to talk about it for, like… weeks.”

“No.” Willie puts his hand up before Aaron can argue. “You weren’t talking, you were hinting. That’s totally different. Hinting doesn’t count.”

Aaron frowns at him. “It worked. Eventually.”

“You could’ve saved a lot of time if you just used words, kid.” Willie shakes his head. “Though I guess then you would’ve got laid a lot less.”

“I like sex.” Aaron fiddles with the straw in his water glass. “I think I’d like sex with you guys a _lot_. I think you would like it, too.”

“Where did you even get the idea that that’s something we’d be into?”

Aaron blinks at him. “Lu told me about your parties when you lived in Vancouver.”

Heat rushes to Willie’s face. “Goalies. Can’t be trusted.”

“Uh-huh.” Aaron smirks a little. “ _And_ he said you kept having them when you got traded to LA. So you can’t pretend it’s, like, old information that doesn’t count anymore. It counts.”

“Okay, but we haven’t done that _here_.”

“Why not?”

Shit. Willie walked right into that one. “It wouldn’t be… appropriate.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m the captain and this is a young team and it—it wouldn’t be appropriate.”

Aaron stares at him, so skeptical it makes Willie want to squirm. “That’s a cop-out.”

“It is not. You don’t understand.” That’s the wrong thing to say and Willie knows it immediately. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just mean—”

“You mean I’m young and I’m stupid and I need to be protected.” Aaron drags his chair closer to the table, staring at Willie intently. “But I _don’t_. I know what I want. I know how to go after it. If it’s just that you’re not interested, that’s one thing, but if it’s not that… what are you really afraid of?”

It takes Willie a minute to pull his own reaction together. “Wait, you seriously can’t believe we might not be interested in you?”

Aaron slowly starts to grin. “I guess that’s a little arrogant, eh? But… I mean, I look at you guys, and I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you looking back, so…”

Willie sits back in his chair as the waiter appears with their food. “I can’t believe I just got talked in circles by you.”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to be better at defense than that.” Aaron giggles. “I’m an offensive defenseman. I’m kicking your ass.”

“You are all kinds of offensive.” Willie shakes his head. “Jesus.”

“So…” Aaron looks at him expectantly, his fork poised in mid-air. “Do I win?”

**

The clock says it’s seven AM. That’s still too early for Willie’s liking, but there’s practice to think about. 

He can grab another ten minutes or so, though. He gropes around with his foot, finding Aaron’s thigh and giving a good solid shove.

“Mmrrgh,” Aaron groans. “What?”

“Go get the coffee going, rookie.”

“What?”

“Coffee,” Willie repeats, nudging him again. He reaches out and finds Megan, drawing her closer to him, which frees more room for Aaron to sit up and get moving. “We’re gonna need it. Chop chop.”

“This isn’t very nice,” Aaron mumbles, dragging himself to his feet and looking around for his boxers. Willie lets himself take a few seconds to admire the view, then closes his eyes again.

“Hey,” Megan says, and Willie can feel her smiling against his shoulder. “We weren’t rude. We let you spend the night.”

Aaron heaves a big sigh. “Is this punishment for me not being more romantic?”

“Maybe.” Willie shrugs. “Step up your game on that front and we’ll find out.”

“I’ll do better,” Aaron calls as he heads down the hall. “I swear!”

Willie kind of can’t wait to find out.


End file.
